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All there was, was Fox.
Mine.
He was my strength and my rock. I clung to him, and he didn’t let me down. He held firm and strong and was everything I ever imagined one could want in a time of need like mine.
“I love you Fox.” I laid my forehead against his wet chest and kissed his skin. “I wouldn’t survive this without you.” I looked up at him and he stared down at me with such tenderness. “I won’t survive anything without you. You’re it for me.”
“Me too, baby.” He growled, leaning down to kiss me slowly. I wrapped my arms around his neck, and he lifted me up and pinned me against the wall. “I can’t breathe anymore when you aren’t around.” He sighed, “It’s like you’re the lifeline I never had until now, and I don’t know how I managed to make it this far in life without you before now.”
“I know.” I sighed and relaxed into his touch, “I never want to be without you.”
“Never.” He growled intensely, “I’m not going anywhere, D. Ever.”
My hands felt clammy as I ran them up and down my jeans to wipe them off. Fox stood by my side, with his hand on my back offering me his support silently.
Rawlings County Medical Examiner’s Office.
The sign was decorated nicely. I wondered who bothered to design a sign for a place that represented so much pain and loss.
“Let’s go.” Fox said, gently urging me forward as he opened the front door. The air was cold, and I shivered in apprehension. “Hi, Delilah Beckett is here.” Fox said to the receptionist, and she told us to have a seat and they’d be right with us.
My mind raced and my heart felt like it was going to beat out of my chest as we waited, but when the doors opened and a middle-aged man in scrubs called us back, I thought it would stop beating completely.
“Come on, baby,” Fox said into my ear, “As soon as it’s done, we’re gone.”
I was silent, I had no words.
The man led us down a hallway to a door where two detectives that were working on my brother’s case waited for us.
“Ms. Beckett.” The man said, “We’re going to go inside, I’ll pull down the sheet covering his body to reveal his face and then you just have to let us know if it’s your brother or not. Then you can leave.”
I nodded on autopilot and grabbed onto the front of Fox’s flannel shirt as he hugged me tighter to his side. The door opened and the cold air rushed out, swirling around me like the hands of fate that had tried to strangle me for years now.
A single table lay in the center of the room, and it was obvious a body lay underneath of the sheet. It was like a scene out of CSI or something, but my heart broke knowing my brother was laying there, his life shortened unnecessarily.
The man stood on the other side of the bed as I neared it and the detectives stood at the end as Fox and I took our place.
“Okay, I’m going to lower the sheet now.” The man said and Fox tightened his hold around me.
The first thing I saw was the dirty blonde hair that he loved for me to play with and the sharp eyebrows that even when his face was relaxed, made him look intense. His perfect nose with a slight curve in the bridge of it from when I punched him and broke it after he jumped out from behind my bedroom door at me in the dark when we were kids. And then his day-old stubble that he thought made him look rough and tough, but in reality, it made him look old.
His perfect face was untouched by the violence he met and for that I was thankful. I stared down at him and ached for his skin to be pink and full of life instead of the odd gray it was now.
Tears burned in my eyes, but I forced them back because I didn’t want to lose this image of him to the blurriness they brought. I wanted to memorize every perfect part of him and store it away inside of me for the long days without him ahead.
It didn’t seem possible to imagine walking around on this earth without him existing on it with me. But I knew it was, because that was the same sense of doubt that I felt when I stood at my mom’s funeral years ago.
Still here I was, still alive and managing every day without her.
Just like I would without Blaine.
“It’s him.” I whispered and reached out, sliding my palm over his hair one last time. “It’s Blaine.”
I had known it would be, but that didn’t keep a small part of my soul from hoping there had been some terrible mistake.
“Thank you.” The examiner said and covered his face with the sheet again as I took a shuddering breath.
One of the detectives cleared his throat and closed his note pad, “Mr. St. Claire, we still need you to come down to the station for those questions.”
